


Ceasefire

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Accents, Alternate Universe - World War II, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-23 22:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: On a miserable night in France, 1944, two soldiers on opposite sides of the war end up taking shelter in the same church.





	1. June, 1944

The rain beats down on Ian in fat droplets that make a deafening metallic rattling noise as they bounce off his helmet. He’s soaked through and staggering through clinging, foreign mud, and at any moment a sniper’s bullet might catch him unawares and leave him helpless and dying on the ground, the rain washing his blood away. It’s that thought that forces him to keep moving and to seek shelter, and when he turns a corner and sees the abandoned church with its door slightly ajar he groans in relief.

It’s been a long, exhausting campaign littered with failures, and though he hates himself for it, Ian is starting to doubt whether they’re actually winning this war. The Germans seem unstoppable, with fresh waves of soldiers emerging from every corner and their great and terrible tanks prowling the streets. It was one such tank that separated Ian from his unit in a brutal attack, and now he’s alone - lost, with no idea where he is or how many of his fellow British soldiers are still alive.

As eager as he is for shelter, Ian isn’t dumb. He slows down when he reaches the church, and treads cautiously and quietly as he approaches the entrance, raising his rifle and using it to push the heavy wooden door open enough for him to slip inside.

It’s a small Protestant church, not too dissimilar to the church Ian attended at home. Some of the pews have been overturned, and the place has no doubt been looted, but it still feels like somewhere safe - somewhere that Ian can ride out the storm. After peering down his rifle into all the corners, and listening carefully for any sound of movement, Ian concludes that he’s alone and reaches up to slide his helmet off his head, exposing his fiery red hair.

Reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform, Ian pulls out a packet of Lucky Strikes that he bartered from an American soldier and taps loose the very last cigarette - miraculously still dry, despite the rain. He sits down on one of the surviving pews and fumbles in his pack for matches, finally pulling them free with his cold, shaking fingers. Once he’s retrieved a match, though, it stubbornly refuses to light after several strikes, and then breaks in half.

Ian swears around the unlit cigarette in his mouth, and plucks another match from the box. He strikes it once, with no success. Then again, the scrape of it echoing through the church, but no spark forthcoming. Ian huffs out an irritated breath, and sets the head of the match against the striker once more.

There’s the scrape of a match, and a sudden flare of flame. But not in Ian’s hands.

He freezes, just briefly, then grabs his rifle and swings it upwards, the stock braced against his shoulder and the barrel pointing at the man sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall of the church, a mere twenty feet away. Somehow Ian must have missed him during his initial sweep of the building, and he’s already internally cursing his carelessness.

“Hands up!” he yells, in what he hopes is a strong, steady voice and not a panicked squeak.

The soldier fixes him with an utterly withering look and takes a long drag from his cigarette, the flare of it lighting his face briefly with an orange glow. He’s wearing a German uniform and there’s a large bloodstain on his abdomen. His left hand is pressed carefully over it, his fingers dark with blood.

“I said get your fuckin’ hands up,” Ian snarls, tightening his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

The soldier blows out smoke and grins obnoxiously. “Or what?” he challenges. “You going to shoot me? Fucking English pussy.”

His accent isn’t German. Russian maybe? Ian is momentarily wrongfooted, but he takes a step closer and glares at the wounded soldier down the barrel of his gun. “I’m not fuckin’ English,” he corrects shortly.

The soldier raises an eyebrow questioningly. “You are wearing the English uniform.”

“It’s a British uniform, and I’m Irish.”

The soldier shrugs, as if it makes no difference to him, and carries on smoking. He’s still shown no signs of putting his hands up, and it’s really starting to piss Ian off.

“Get those hands in the air, or I’ll put a bullet through your skull,” he warns darkly.

The stranger chuckles, takes the cigarette from his mouth and carefully taps off the ash before securing it between his lips again. “You are going to shoot an unarmed, wounded man? Pussy.”

His command of English is surprisingly fluent, and his accent is still throwing Ian off. Lowering his rifle by just a few degrees, he asks, “What are you, Russian?”

The soldier pulls an ugly face and shakes his head. Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he replies, “Ukrainian," rolling the _R_ smoothly.

Ian frowns, uncertain, trying to remember whose side the Ukrainians are on. He’s never met one before. Honestly, he isn’t even sure where Ukraine is. “So, what, you fight for the Nazis?” he asks, trying to reestablish the higher ground by pouring disgust into the word _Nazi_.

The soldier shrugs laconically. “They invaded my country. They offered food in my belly and clothes on my back if I joined them, so I joined them.” He takes a drag from his cigarette, smirks. “And what are _you_ doing here, little red?”

Ian grits his teeth. He may have lied about his age when he enlisted, but he’s not a boy any more. “I joined up to protect my country, and my family, and to take down Adolf Hitler.” The words are strong and confident. It’s not the first time that Ian’s said them. He takes another step closer, and lifts his rifle again, mentally steeling himself to shoot. “Now, I’m going to tell you just one more time. Put your fuckin’ hands up.”

The Ukrainian soldier surveys him with clever eyes, smoke curling around his face. “If I put my hands up,” he says. “I will bleed out and die anyway. So shoot me, little soldier boy. I’d rather go quick than slow.”

Ian breathes through his nose angrily, but the idea of shooting this man in the head doesn’t feel good, or brave, or heroic. He’s killed plenty of men since he was shipped over here, but always from a distance, and alway with men around him firing their guns as well, so it’s not always clear whose bullets are actually doing the killing. To slaughter this wounded, unarmed man in God’s own house is not something that Ian is capable of. Reluctantly, he lowers his gun.

“How badly are you hurt?” he inquires.

The soldier looks down at his blood-soaked tunic, presses his fingers down a little more and winces. “I am not a doctor,” he replies. “But this does not feel good.”

Ian chews his lip, then says, “I have a first aid kit, and some medical training. I might be able to help.”

All he gets in response is a surprised twitch of the soldier’s eyebrows, before he looks away, as though he’s already grown bored of the conversation. Ian carefully sets his rifle down on the pew and removes his first aid kit from his belt.

He approaches slowly and kneels down in front of the soldier, finally getting a good look at him. He’s young, probably not much older than Ian himself, but the hardness of his expression indicates that he’s been living as an adult for some time. His skin is very pale and smudged with dirt, and his hair is pure black and cut in the traditional _Wehrmacht_ style - long on top, but shaved down at the sides.

Taking some gauze out of his pack, Ian lays his hand over the soldier’s bloody one and starts to ease it away from his side. “Let me see,” he instructs gently.

The blow to the head seems to come out of nowhere.

Ian staggers and falls. He’s stunned, but still alert enough to know that if he doesn’t fight back, he’s going to die. So when he finds himself on his back with a combat knife swinging down towards his face, Ian gathers up his tattered senses and grabs the Ukrainian’s wrist tightly before it finishes its descent, pulling the tip of the knife away from his face.

Their grunts echo around the church as they struggle - Ian just barely holding the blade away from his chest. The Ukrainian straddles him and leans all of his weight down on the knife, his teeth bared in determination, and Ian howls in pain and fear as the blade pushes down point-first into his chest, easing towards his heart.

In desperation, Ian wraps his legs around the Ukrainian soldier and heaves them over, reversing their positions and dragging the knife messily out of his flesh - leaving a long, ragged, bloody line from the puncture wound in his pectoral to the lower edges of his ribs. Furious, Ian takes advantage of the Ukrainian’s surprise and his own superior position, and slams the hand holding the knife down against the cold stone floor of the church. The soldier yells at the impact and his fingers loosen on the weapon, which skitters away out of both their reaches.

Ian is furious. “You try to kill me after I let you live, ya fuckin’ gobshite!” he yells. “When I was tryin’ to help ya?”

The soldier grins up at him fiercely. “You stupid fucking English bastard,” he sneers. “It is not my blood. I tricked you.”

Ian wraps his hands around the Ukrainian’s throat, then rears back as far as he can when the soldier attempts to return the favor with his newly-freed hands. Ian has longer arms, though, and gravity on his side. Soon, the soldier’s pale face is purpling as he tries and fails to draw breath.

Strangulation is a nasty, exhausting, drawn-out manner of death - nothing like shooting a vague shape and watching it fall. Ian tries to be a man, breathing in and out determinedly through his nose, but then a breeze rolls through the church and something catches his eye.

It’s a Bible, obviously fallen from one of the pews, and the sudden movement of air has turned its pages open to an illustration of Christ on the cross. Ian’s stomach suddenly turns, and his fingers loosen. He can’t do this. Not here. Not with God watching.

Ian stands up abruptly, leaving the Ukrainian coughing harshly on the ground and clutching at his bruised throat. Ian marches over to the knife and kicks it angrily, so that it skids away into the dark. Then he storms back and grabs his rifle away from the Ukrainian’s grasping fingers, deftly unloading it. He hurls the magazine across the church as well, the metallic sound of its landing echoing around the church. Finally, he stomps back to the spot where the two of them fought and sits down heavily, leaning back against the cool stone wall and pressing his hand against the freely bleeding wound on his chest.

“There,” he snaps, as the Ukrainian manages to heave himself into an upright position. “Now I’m wounded and unarmed. So I s’pose if you kill me then you’re the pussy.”

The Ukrainian leans back against a pew. Night has fallen outside, and Ian can’t see the man’s face clearly in the dark. But after a few moments the soldier asks, “Do you have any food, little red?”

* * *

His name is Mikhailo Milkovich, and he has to say it quite a few times before Ian can even get close to pronouncing it. He was born in a small town in the east of Ukraine, and was nearly killed by the _Wehrmacht_ before he impressed them with his knowledge of both English and German. He was taken prisoner, and used as a translator by the Nazi officers before eventually being assigned to fight in a unit of his fellow Ukrainians.

“They send us where they need us,” he says, lighting Ian’s last cigarette. “So I ended up here. We were in trouble, cornered, so I abandoned my unit and ran.”

“You’re a deserter?” Ian asks, unable to keep the contempt out of his voice.

Mikhailo chuckles. “But a deserter of Nazis, yes? So I am a hero now.”

They break down one of the pews and build a small fire for warmth. The rain is still falling heavily outside, and Ian can hear distant, echoey drips inside the church where the roof has failed. Ian opens up his rations packet and grudgingly gives some of his food to Mikhailo - hard crackers, dry biscuits, and canned ham.

The Ukrainian opens up the latter ration tin and peers into it skeptically. “What the fuck is this?” he demands.

“Ham,” Ian mumbles, spraying cracker crumbs.

“Does not look like any ham I ever saw,” Mikhailo mutters, but he eats it anyway, and he takes several sly swigs from Ian’s water canteen as well.

The food makes Ian feel a little calmer and stronger, and once he’s done eating he turns his attention to the cut on his chest. He unbuttons his tunic carefully, and hisses as he pulls the material away from his torn skin, the drying blood making it stick. The wound is not serious or life-threatening - at least, not unless it ends up getting infected - but it hurts like hell.

Ian opens his small bottle of iodine and retrieves a pad of cotton. He grits his teeth, screws his eyes shut, and touches the iodine-soaked pad to the still-bleeding wound on his chest.

“Ahhh!” he hisses, biting down on a whole string of curse words and settling for a single exclamation of “Fuck!”

Mikhailo chuckles unsympathetically, watching the display with apparent amusement.

“You think this is funny, ya fuckin’ eejit?” Ian snaps, painstakingly cleaning the wound. “You could at least pretend to be sorry.”

“Ha! My father gave me worse than that for looking at him wrong. You’ll be fine, little boy.”

“You can stop with that an’ all, I’m nineteen,” Ian lies grumpily.

The Ukrainian doesn’t look convinced. “You probably don’t have a single hair on your balls,” he comments, pulling out his own pack of cigarettes and lighting a fresh one.

“Oh aye? You wanna check?” Ian grabs his crotch with his free hand.

Mikhailo smirks. “I would like to know if…” He seems to struggle to find the proper English phrase. “If your ball hair matches your head hair.”

Ian is still irritated, but he laughs despite himself. “Oh, it does,” he replies, carefully pressing a pad of gauze over the cut and bandaging it into place.

Mikhailo laughs too - a friendly sound this time. “I have never seen hair like yours before,” he confesses. “Except on cats. Remind me, where are you from?”

“Ireland.”

“Oy-er-land,” Mikhailo repeats slowly, in a mangled version of Ian’s accent. “You have family in Oy-er-land?”

“Oh yeah, loads. Me ma and me da ain’t around much, but I got loads of brothers and sisters.” He noticed a wedding ring on Mikhailo’s finger. “What about you?”

The soldier nods stiffly, and reaches into the breast pocket of his uniform. He pulls out a photograph - tattered and a little blurry - and hands it to Ian, who inspects it. It shows a severe-looking woman with a baby on her knee, the latter clad in an elaborate frilly white christening dress.

“My wife, Svetlana,” Mikhailo explains shortly. “And my son, Yevgeny.”

“Are they still in Ukraine?”

Mikhailo blows smoke, shakes his head, and passes the cigarette to Ian. “When the Germans invaded, they fled across the border to Russia. My wife has family there.”

“You must be worried about them,” Ian says, sliding the cigarette between his lips.

The soldier shrugs. “Svetlana can take care of herself, and she would slit the throat of any man who tried to harm Yevgeny. I am more worried about myself.” He watches Ian for a few seconds, as Ian continues to examine the photo. “You think she’s pretty?”

“Eh? Oh… I don’t really know.”

Mikhailo raises an eyebrow, taking the photo back from Ian. “Most people, when I show them that picture, they say, ‘Oh, your wife is so pretty.’ Sometimes they say more than that.” He grins nastily. “Sometimes they say too much, and then I have to hurt them.”

Suddenly, Ian is very glad that he didn’t comment on the wife’s looks. “Well, beauty is as beauty does,” he ventures.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“I… don’t know actually. Just something me sister always says.”

Ian suddenly realizes how exhausted he is, now that the rush of energy he got from fighting for his life has faded. He stubs out the burned-down cigarette, picks up the fallen Bible and closes it, then sets it down on the ground so that it can serve as his pillow. Glancing over at Mikhailo warily, he asks, “If I go to sleep, will you kill me?”

The Ukrainian shows off his teeth again in a none-too-comforting smile. “If I decide to kill you, I will wake you up first.”

“Oh thanks, that’s very considerate, that is.”

* * *

The morning sunrise seems to arrive far too soon, dappling the floor of the church with colored patterns of light as the sun’s rays pass through the stained glass windows. Ian stirs slowly, and squints across the blackened remains of the fire at Mikhailo, who is dead to the world. Later, it occurs to Ian that he could have killed the Ukrainian right then and there, but even if he had thought of it at the time, he’d never stoop so low as to kill a man while he’s sleeping.

Instead, Ian just looks at the enemy soldier and allows himself to see how good-looking he is, a good deal better-looking (to Ian, at least) than the woman in the photo. Then, chasing such thoughts out of his head, he kicks Mikhailo roughly in the leg.

“Oy, wake up,” he says huskily.

The soldier startles at the rude awakening, immediately sitting up and reaching for his knife. He looks around wildly, his hair flattened where he slept on it. He catches sight of Ian and pauses for a moment, apparently trying to remember who the hell he is.

“Mornin’, sleeping beauty,” Ian says, smiling and silently glad that he kicked the knife away last night.

Any retort that Mikhailo might have been readying is chased away by the distant crackle of gunfire. They both turn to look in the direction of the sound, Ian’s expression sobering immediately.

“Ah, fuck,” he says. “I’d better head back. I should be there.”

“It is your funeral,” Mickey says with a yawn, lying back down. Apparently he has no intention of rejoining the Germans.

Ian checks his bandages, then gathers up his things into his pack. He retrieves his rifle and the magazine and reunites them, noting how Mikhailo watches him warily as he does so. To make his intentions clear, Ian slings the rifle over his back.

“Well,” he says, suddenly at a loss for words. “I’ll be off, then.”

Mikhailo looks up at him from where he’s still lying on the ground. In the daylight, Ian can see that he’s really quite handsome, and his eyes are a striking blue. “I hope you do not die,” he says, in a gentler voice than Ian has ever heard him use before. “I hope you get back to Oy-er-land.”

Ian laughs and ducks his head away. “Yeah. I hope you see your wife and your little one again.”

He leaves, glancing back over his shoulder just once, as he reaches the church door. As he walks back towards the war, he feels suddenly overcome by a wave of sadness, but he writes it off as fear, puts his head down, and keeps marching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Background info:
> 
> In this fic, Ian is from Northern Ireland and fighting as part of the British Army. Mickey is serving as part of the Ukrainian Liberation Army - volunteers who fought alongside the Wehrmacht after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the time Ukraine was part of the USSR, but Mickey is offended by being called Russian for pretty much the same reason that Ian is offended by being called English.
> 
> Though not specified in the text, this chapter of the fic takes place in the aftermath of Operation Perch, a British offensive aimed at taking the city of Caen from the Germans (spoilers: it failed).


	2. October, 1948

After a long day of work at the fish market, Ian’s hands are so covered in scales that he looks like he’s part-merman. He goes home and wears down whole bars of soap trying to get the stench out of his skin, but even when he scrubs himself red-raw the stench still remains. Ian thinks that maybe it’s soaked down to his bones now, and that even if he gets rich and buys a big mansion far, far away from the ocean, he’ll always stink a little bit of fish.

At long, long last the steam whistle indicating the end of trading sounds, and Ian breathes a sigh of relief. His fingers are sore from the ice, and his back aches from standing all day. He finishes gutting his final crate of fish and then walks away, untying his apron as he goes. As he heads for the door, someone falls in step beside him.

“That posh lass stopped by my stall again,” says Lip smugly, wiping his hands on his apron and then ruffling his blond hair self-consciously.

“Oh aye?” Ian replies, amused, reaching up to pick a stray scale out of his brother’s hair. “Maybe she wanted to see if you’d grown gills.”

“Oy, get out of it!” Lip laughs, ducking away. “I’m telling you, Ian, she likes the rough and ready sort. All the posh lasses do.”

“Well, you’re about as rough as they come.” Ian shoves Lip playfully, then yells when he gets put in a headlock, trying to punch Lip’s ribs in retaliation.

“Hey!” a sneering, angry voice cuts through the noise, followed by a shoulder-check that nearly knocks Ian down, and Lip with him. “Can’t you fuckin’ people wait until after work to start drinking?”

The barb immediately sobers Ian up, and he glares hatefully at the back of the man who insulted them. It’s a very broad back, and it’s attached to a man at least a head taller than Ian, but that doesn’t prevent him from surging forward - held back only by Lip’s quick reflexes.

“Alright, calm down now,” Lip mutters urgently. “Don’t go pickin’ any fights that I’ll have to finish.”

Ian shrugs his brother off angrily. “It’s not so bad for you,” he hisses back. “You don’t have this stupid fuckin’ red hair.” He ruffles his fingers through his locks, a harsh mockery of what Lip did earlier. 

“What can I say, at least Da handed down somethin’ worth having,” Lip shoots back, grinning, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

They live in the heart of the Bronx, just a couple of miles away from the fish market. It’s the kind of walk that’s refreshing in the morning but tedious in the evening, and Ian is still dwelling on the casual insult, his mood darkening with every heavy step of his feet. Lip seems to take note of his brother’s pouting, because he throws an arm around Ian and whispers to him conspiratorially as they approach an Irish pub.

“What say we live up to the stereotype, eh?”

Ian grimaces. “You and your fuckin’ ten dollar words.”

Lip laughs and drags him into the pub. Unlike Ian, he hadn’t fought in the war. Northern Ireland had been exempt from conscription, and Lip hadn’t shared Ian’s enthusiasm for defending the nation. Instead he had stayed home and worked in the munitions factory with Fiona, but even though his dreams of going to university were pretty thoroughly derailed, he had continued reading whatever books he could get his hands on. Sometimes Ian gets jealous of how smart his brother is, but then he remembers that he and Lip have ended up in the exact same place. Maybe brains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

With a pint in his hand, the world starts to look a little merrier to Ian - until, of course, Lip spots a group of his friends sitting at a table and goes to join them, trailing Ian in his wake. They’re rowdy and rough-spoken, and it isn’t long until the conversation turns to the subject of girls - the cadence shifting between mock-guilty muttering and huge roars of laughter. Ian smiles and laughs along, without much enthusiasm, but he gets distracted by an altercation at the back of the bar.

It’s quiet, not even drawing the attention of the nearest patrons, but Ian can recognize trouble when he sees it. Donald, the proprietor of the pub, is backed into a corner by the door that leads to the back office, looking distinctly nervous. Around him are three men that Ian at first mistakes for businessmen, with their expensive suits and neatly slicked-back hair. Then he notices the unique bulge of a gun holster underneath the closest man’s suit, and he realizes that a different kind of business is taking place.

Bowing his head and nodding vigorously in defeat, Donald lets the three men into the back office. Two of them follow him right in, but the third man glances back to survey the crowded pub.

His eyes immediately land on Ian, who is still staring like an idiot.

He knows that he should look away, look down - give the universal signal for “ _I didn’t see nothing_.” But he can’t look away because he _knows_ this man, he knows him from a lifetime ago…

“Mikhailo?” Ian mutters, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“What’d you say?” Lip mumbles, swinging his head back round drunkenly to look at his brother.

“Nothing,” Ian says distantly, still staring. He sees the mobster’s expression turn dark, apparently having read Ian’s lips. Then Mikhailo turns swiftly to say something to one of his compatriots, who nods in acknowledgment and closes the office door behind him.

Ian suddenly gets a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, compounded when Mikhailo starts pushing people aside on an apparent warpath straight to Ian’s table.

“I gotta go,” Ian stammers, already standing up and trying to push his own way through the crowd.

“Why? Where are you goin’, you daft…”

But Ian doesn’t hear the rest of whatever Lip says to him. He shoves his way to the pub’s front door, leaving a trail of angry yells behind him as the people he jolted spill their drinks. Before anyone can start a fight with him, though, he’s free and sprinting down the street.

His breath is harsh in his chest. He doesn’t even really know why he’s running, except that when Mikhailo looked at him it was with murder in his eyes. Ian zig-zags, rounds a corner into a less busy street, runs as fast as his legs will carry him.

The Ukrainian barrels out of a side-alley and crashes into Ian, latching onto him even as he staggers and getting a strong, rough hand over his mouth. Ian squirms and tries to yell, but he’s already being dragged into the alley, swiftly out of sight.

He’s spun around, slammed painfully against the brick wall, and as soon as he opens his mouth to protest he finds a gun barrel inside it.

Ian stands very, very still.

Mikhailo is breathing hard, drops of sweat trickling down his reddening face, his formerly neat hair now rumpled and messy. He stares into Ian’s face, not saying anything, for several long seconds.

“It _is_ you,” he says at last. His Ukrainian accent is gone - completely erased - and instead he speaks with what sounds suspiciously like an Italian-American twang. He sweeps his fingers back through his hair, straightening it out, still not taking his eyes off Ian. “This has gotta be next to impossible.”

The gun barrel is slowly drawn out of Ian’s mouth. Once it’s clear, he closes his aching jaw and tries to work some saliva back into his dry, panicked mouth.

“Mik-”

“You say that fucking name out loud and I swear it’ll be the last fucking thing you ever say,” Mikhailo interrupts, in one long rush. His English may have been fluent before, but now the words trip off his tongue rapidly and with graceful ease. “My name is Mickey now. Say it.”

“Mickey.”

“Good boy.”

Mickey lets the gun drop to his side, but he doesn’t holster it. He wipes a hand down his damp face and checks both ends of the alley for any potential eavesdroppers.

“You know, we still got a problem, you and me,” he says at last, turning back to look warily at Ian and speaking in hushed tones. “See, as far as I know you’re the only guy in this city who knows my name ain’t Mickey Moretti. You’re the only guy in this city who knows whose side I fought on in the war. So that means you’re the only guy in the city who could really screw me.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly. “So tell me. What the fuck should I do with you?”

Ian looks down at the gun. He slowly eases away from the wall he was plastered to, raising his hands in submission. “I guess we could get a drink,” he suggests.

Mickey stares at him for several long, tense seconds. Then a broad grin splits his face and he laughs, holstering his gun.

“You’re buying,” he says.

* * *

Mickey didn’t just come to America after the war; the war brought him to America. Specifically, a uniform and a set of dog tags belonging to one Michael Moretti, who was slaughtered along with the rest of his unit in a skirmish in Lisieux. Mickey had been idly looting the bodies when he read the dog tags out of curiosity, and the dead soldier’s name sparked an idea in him.

The real Michael Moretti had been stripped naked and dragged out into the woods, to be devoured beyond recognition by animals. Mickey had taken his uniform, his name, and his dog tags. He had used a straight razor to shave his hair down to the US Army’s regulation haircut. He had punched himself in the face repeatedly until he fractured his cheekbone and produced enough swelling that no one could say for sure, looking at him, that he _wasn’t_ Michael Moretti.

And then the final step. Michael Moretti had been killed by a gunshot wound to his skull, but he’d also been shot in the shoulder. Mickey had known that a bullet hole with no bullet wound would raise questions, so he did the most logical thing.

He shot himself.

When the next Allied unit passed by - British soldiers - they had found Mickey weakly crying out for help. In the chaos and overwhelming bloodshed of the latter years of the war, no one had the time or inclination to question the story of a single wounded American soldier, and Michael Moretti was shipped back to America for his convalescence. He was even awarded a Purple Heart for his service.

“No fuckin’ way!” Ian snaps, caught between being astounded by Mickey’s balls, and genuinely offended by this story of stolen honor.

Mickey, on the other hand, seems to think that the story is hugely amusing. He laughs so hard that he has to wipe tears from his eyes.

“Where’s the medal?” Ian demands. “Show me the medal.”

“Pfft,” Mickey snorts. “I pawned that thing as soon as I got outta the hospital. Couldn’t exactly go home to Mama Moretti, could I? Cashed ol’ Mikey’s last paycheck as well, and let me tell you - I was fighting for the wrong side in that war.”

He passes the bottle of whiskey to Ian, who takes it gladly, his hands shaking from the cold. They’re sitting on the top floor of a vacant, gutted building, looking out at the view and taking turns to swig from the bottle. Mickey has loosened his tie and undone the top button of his shirt, and now that he’s stopped laughing he’s wearing the vaguely pissed off expression that Ian recognizes as the hallmark of a violent drunk. 

“So how’d you end up, y’know, shaking down bars?” Ian asks carefully.

Mickey waves a hand. “Long story. Short version is I caught wind of New York having a pretty healthy underground industry and I decided I wanted to be a part of it. Now I am.”

“And they don’t… I mean, these guys think you’re really one of them?”

A shrug. “I’ve always had a gift for it.” There’s barely a pause, and when Mickey speaks again it’s in his real voice - the voice that Ian heard all those years ago in France. “Languages. Accents. You know? Hell, I speak Italian better than most of these cocksuckers.” He drops the Ukrainian drawl and returns to speaking in his mobster voice. “Italian-American’s real easy, it’s mainly about always trying to talk louder than the other guy.”

Ian takes a deep breath, then blows it out slowly. “I see now why you didn’t kill me,” he says. “If I told anyone all this, there’s no way they’d believe me.”

Mickey had bristled at the mention of killing, but slowly relaxes as the rest of what Ian said sinks in. Then he laughs again - short and sharp - and punches Ian in the stomach playfully. “C’mon,” he says, standing up. “Let’s walk.”

He doesn’t specify where they should walk to, so Ian just starts heading for home, vaguely aware of how late he’s stayed out.

“We talked a lot about me,” Mickey says, his voice muffled as he talks around the action of lighting a cigarette. Straightening up as he takes the first drag, he breathes out in a cloud of smoke as he says, “How did you end up here?”

Ian looks down while he talks, embarrassed. “I always wanted to come to America. Back home, I had a job sweeping up at the cinema, after the films were over. And my boss used to let me sit in the projector room and watch the films, if I was quiet.”

“That’s why you came to America?” Mickey asks skeptically, passing the cigarette. “Because of movies?”

“Yeah, and just… I hated Ireland, you know? Really fuckin’ hated it. Felt like I was suffocating there. So I told the family I was going, and Lip said he’d come too. And now we’re both out here.” Ian takes a long, slow drag from the cigarette. “All because I wanted to be Clark Gable.”

Mickey chuckles harshly. “And are you? Clark Gable? What do you do?”

“I work at the fish market.”

Ian stares at the ground, braced for peals of laughter. But Mickey just grunts in acknowledgement and says, “You smell like fish.”

Ian’s face heats up, probably going bright red. “Thanks, I know,” he mutters, handing the cigarette back.

Mickey takes it with a shrug. “It ain’t so bad,” he says. “I like seafood.”

It could just be Ian’s imagination, but it seems like Mickey gives extra weight to that last statement. And Ian feels a curl of fear and anticipation and uncertainty in his stomach, as he realizes they’re turning onto his street.

He and Lip share a room in a house divided up into bedsits. They don’t have much furniture, besides the creaky twin beds, but they have it better than most. There’s a communal bathroom with hot water, and they have a small stove for cooking food.

As they approach the house Ian glances upwards without really meaning to, and sees that the window of their room is dark. Lip isn’t home. He slows to a stop, and Mickey keeps walking for a few steps until he realizes that Ian isn’t by his side. He turns to face Ian, his expression curious.

“Um. Well, this is me,” Ian says, tilting his head towards the building.

“Right,” Mickey responds. And then he doesn’t do or say anything else, doesn’t say goodbye or move to leave. He just stands there, looking at Ian expectantly.

“Ah.” Ian’s fingers are shaking, and he clenches them into fists as he asks with false lightness, “Would you like to come up for a cup of tea?”

He doesn’t expect Mickey to say yes. But he does, with a small nod of his head, and he follows Ian up the steps to the front door. Ian’s heart is hammering in his chest as he fumbles with the keys, hyper-aware of Mickey’s profile in his peripheral vision.

Ian and Lip’s room is on the top floor, and it feels like every single step creaks louder than usual as they ascend the staircase. Most people in the building are already asleep, and the walls are thin. Every doorway they pass, Ian half expects someone to burst out of it and demand to know what the racket is about, and who his new friend is.

But instead, they reach Ian’s room unimpeded, without a word of conversation passing between them. Ian’s skin is prickling inside his clothes as he opens the door and lets them inside, hearing Mickey close it behind him as Ian despairs over the mess and tries to spot the things he’ll need to make tea.

“I’m afraid we’ve only got powdered milk, but…”

Mickey catches Ian’s wrist, a little clumsy from the whiskey he’s imbibed, but still gentle. As Ian turns back to face him he says, in his Ukrainian accent, “I did not come up for tea.”

Ian panics, a faint part of him still thinking that Mickey brought him up here to kill him. This thought lingers all the way up until the moment that Mickey’s mouth connects with his, and after that Ian doesn’t think about very much at all.

They go to bed, and Mickey ghosts his fingers over the scar on Ian’s chest as he removes his shirt. Ian captures his hand, rolls them over so that Mickey is on his back with Ian between his legs, and presses himself down to whisper in Mickey’s ear.

“We have to be quiet,” he murmurs, strains of urgency and fear in the words. “We’ve got to be quiet, alright?”

Mickey nods in acknowledgement as he pushes Ian’s trousers down.

* * *

Afterwards, Mickey sits on the edge of the bed in just his underwear, smoking. He seems to have sobered up, but Ian can’t read any signs of regret. He wonders how many times Mickey has done this before - in different miserable rooms around New York, with different men.

“Your wife,” Ian says, idly drinking in the sight of Mickey’s bare torso. “Your boy. Did you see them again?”

Mickey shakes his head. “I send them money every month,” he replies. “That is how my wife likes me best. Far away, but not so far away that she can’t still reach into my wallet.”

He stands up, then bends over and reaches for his crumpled, discarded shirt. Ian bites his lip, then sits up.

“You can stay here tonight, if you like,” he offers. “You can have Lip’s bed. If he’s not back by midnight it means he’s found a pretty lass to go home with.”

Mickey shrugs his shirt over his shoulders and starts to button it. “Sorry, little red,” he says, the warmth Ian previously heard in his voice fading away, to be replaced by something distant and false. “I have to get to work.”

“Well can I see you again?” Ian asks, not caring how desperate he sounds. He stands just as Mickey is shrugging his black waistcoat on over his white shirt, and catches the mobster by the lapels. “Please?”

Mickey reluctantly meets his gaze, his body language screaming his desire to get away. Ian sighs in defeat, and backs off.

“I’m so fuckin’ lonely,” he admits.

He lets Mickey put on the rest of his clothes unmolested, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. He feels sticky and stiff, his back and thigh muscles already seizing up. He isn’t expecting Mickey to stop at the door, and to walk back, and to stand over him, and to ask:

“Which fish market do you work at?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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